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It’s really interesting here – so many amazing buildings, and most of them empty! Also, I’ve seen women wearing the black abaya my friend living in Saudi Arabia was discussing – I’m not sure I could pull it off, I’m warm in the light long sleeve shirt I wore for dune smashing yesterday. I’m also very curious to see what the New Year’s Event tonight will be like. The place we’re going has two night clubs, and I really don’t know what to expect.
I don’t think we’ve met any Emiratis yet – everyone is from somewhere else…
This morning, we’ll see a couple of things, including the Emirates Hills which I understand is to be a sustainably built housing development, and then we’ll have a break in the afternoon which I hope to use to get a few pictures up, if I can get through the school filters, which don’t like images.
Here’s the announcement – after a little bit of background information on the United Arab Emirates and, in particular, the emirate of Dubai.
Dubai has been in the news a bit this fall – like the rest of the world, the country’s finances are less ideal than they have been in the past. Recent coverage in US media includes Wall Street Journal‘s Dubai: A High Rise, Then a Steep Fall on Dec 4 and the New York Times‘ photo essay Dubai’s Improbably Tale.
This Monday, the BBC reported more mixed news, with Abu Dhabi gives Dubai $10bn to help pay debts and Gulf News had this article: Dubai issues new legal framework to deal with Dubai World disputes. All this may be especially relevant to Phoenix, given the relationship between the two cities.
As far as regular and background information, one of the best sites is Gulf News. More coverage can often be found through Al Jazeera English and the BBC’s regional coverage.
To finish the background information, you can’t talk about Dubai without talking about the construction…
So, why all the information about Dubai? Well, when I posted this October entry, I had just heard about an opportunity – I was in a hopeful mood, and now that it’s finalized, I can make a bit of an announcement…
I’ll be taking a trip over winter break through ASU Study Abroad. The program is called A Tale of Two Cities – Dubai and Phoenix. It’s led by Jamil AlShraiky who specializes in healthcare design industry at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. As for the troup, we’re an interdisciplinary bunch including students from design, healthcare, and journalism programs. The blog is already up here.
Yes, I’m REALLY excited, and yes, I’ll be writing about it. How much will be posted live from on-site will depend on internet access, which has been described as “really good dial-up…we’re sure it will work if your computers are right.” But there will definitely be somethings as the trip unfolds, as well as (probably tons of) pictures by mid-January when we get back.
Journalism doesn’t work without knowing your story, and knowing your story involves knowing your place. Since most of my class is new to Phoenix (and a lot of us are technically new to journalism) many of our first assignments were designed to get us moving through the community and building new skills – double travel. And of course, I got pictures out of experience.
Abstracts & Details
Many of my POP examples from Phoenix came out of class assignments, like the first one I mentioned in the earlier post. What was that first photo assignment for my media class? Abstracts. And how does that fit into pictures of pictures? Well, a few came out as micro POP examples.
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Going Historical
One of our ongoing assignments this semester is researching historical neighborhoods. This project took me to the Historic Preservation Offfice which is located in City Hall – it’s an fantastic office with truly stellar staff. The two pictures below, the vertical ones, are from a 1915 Sanborn Map company book of insurance maps of Phoenix.
Shoot First
Another is called “shoot first” where we capture images that are interesting, then find out what’s behind them. The first set is from a downtown sculpture called “Release the Fear,” built out of weapons turned in by the community.
There’s local graffiti which turned out to be notices for a well-known visual artist and a local music movement.
And there’s this mural just east of Roosevelt Street, whose story I don’t know yet. (If you do, tell me in the comments!)
From Phoenix (2009) |
Travel includes tourism, but is much wider. It includes work, study, moving, and migration. And travel isn’t always physical. Learning can take you from one place to another in ways that a car or plane never can. I’ve heard the argument that meditation is travel too. To me, the best trips involve overlap – trips where the travel comes from more than one source. The following story, to me, is one of the most meaningful examples of travel I’ve found.
I first came across this story in the September issue of American Photo On Campus. I knew immediately that I wanted to write about it – and that it wouldn’t be a fast or easy blog post. While I wrestled with it, or more accurately, avoided facing it head on, the rest of the world kept on noticing. Recently the National Portrait Gallery‘s Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 announced their selection of new emerging artist Jonathan Torgovnik as the overall winner for his work. The photos were already making waves this spring with blogs like The Girl Project, which also explores the impact of photography, posting a review in April.
As Slate.com describes, these children are often called “enfants mauvais souvenirs,” or “children of bad memories.” Slate points out that Torgovnik himself is a child of Holocaust survivors. The article also how many of these women are deeply committed towards giving their children an education, despite the fact the secondary school is nearly unaffordable for most of them, a fact which led Torgovnik to start Foundation Rwanda.
Part of the impact of work like this is to introduce a topic worth knowing and thinking about. For understanding Rwanda, the two best books that I can recommend are Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda and Colonel Romeo Dallaire’s first hand account Shake Hands With the Devil. Video of Dr. Alison Des Forges, the world’s leading expert on Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and its aftermath, is available here and her report, Leave No One to Tell the Story, is also on the site (thanks to Human Rights Watch website). For a wider view of Rwanda and the international reaction, I recommend Samanta Power’s A Problem From Hell as well as articles on Darfur from The New Yorker and The New York Times.
As far as Torgovnik’s work, an online version of Intended Consequences, with audio and visual, is available here at Media Storm. For physical copies the photographs are collected here and the book is available on sites like Amazon. The project was funded by a Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography. As for his background, Torgovnick went to school in New York and
Canon lists him as a contract photographer in their profile. And here’s Jonathan Torgovnick’s official site.
Every year magazine publishers Conde Nast surveys their readers and publishes the result through CN Traveller as with this year’s edition of the Readers’ Travel Awards 2009. While the real expert on Conde Nast is my classmate Liz, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to look at one example of travel rankings.
Lists. Travel publications seem to love them. For almost any place you can imagine, there’s lists of restaurants, hotels, and sites you can’t afford to miss while visiting. And for every category of lists, there is the “Best Of” set. For the Readers’ Travel Awards 2009, the categories include: countries, overseas cities, airports, airlines, and trains. Definitely check out the airlines and trains for an idea of all the ways to get around.
It’s a great, exciting list of countries and cities – a fantastic set of possibilities. Since representation is low in central Africa, the Arabian peninsula, Asia, and both central and south America, I’ll add a few cities from my travel wish-list: Nairobi (an hour and a half simply wasn’t enough!), Lusaka, Dar es Salaam, Beirut, Aman, Damascus, Beijing, and Shanghai. Oh, and Asuncion, Mexico City, Santiago, Panama City, & Montevideo. Yeah, that’s a good start.
To be honest, there are prices tags on most of Conde Nast’s content, tags that’re a bit steep for a grad student budget. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the pictures and the articles. Subjects include everything from the Sechellyes to ski resorts, and London’s airports to Marrekech’s restaurants. There’s also advice from specific, like Guide to Plettenberg, to general tips and advice.